Mr. Gary Tobin:

I thank the Deputy for the very good question. Currently, Ireland uses approximately 6 GW of electricity at peak demand. As the committee will be aware, demand is growing rapidly. We foresee the potential for 12 GW to 15 GW, and even possibly 20 GW, to be needed in the medium term. The aim regarding offshore wind is to potentially develop up to 37 GW of renewable offshore wind energy by 2050. That is significantly potentially ahead of the existing demand we may require. Why are we doing that? The answer is that forecasts are all well and good, but we may be underestimating the volume of electricity we will to need.

We are also very aware that certain key sectors of primary importance to the economy, particularly in the tech sector, are highly electricity demand intensive. Let us consider artificial intelligence say, or the cloud. What is the cloud that everybody sends their data to? The cloud is essentially a data centre. At present, we have 70 to 80 data centres in Ireland and their size, energy use and the data they hold varies. This really is key infrastructure that lies behind all the digital aspects of social and work lives. Our ability to remote work, to do video calling, retail banking and, increasingly, public service delivery, including healthcare, is moving into the digital space and that will require more and more large-scale energy users in, for example, the data centre space. There are huge opportunities for Ireland in developing its digital economy. We are hearing increasingly from foreign direct investors that are thinking about next generation investment and that reliability and certainty around the supply of significant power will be absolutely key to their decision-making. For example, if Ireland has the ability, in the medium term, to generate significant offshore wind energy on the west coast where the wind is strong and consistent, the energy could be brought onshore. Ideally we might want to locate high-electricity-use energy parks close to where the power is coming onshore. It could be the west, south or north east coasts. There is very significant potential for significant regional economic development outside of the traditional Dublin zone. That could be very attractive to Irish companies that are large-scale energy users and also to foreign multinationals.